L O N G post warning!
OK all, but actually I don't think anyone HAS actually made a good point about file ownership, sorry.
I've had a rather interesting time (a LONG time actually) investigating a number of the points raised in this thread.
First, that "ownership" issue, as first posted by MarkDennehy.
I asked "have Amazon ever actually done this, and if so, why?" (My apologies Mark, at the time of posting that I hadn't followed the link you provided). Now I have, it's from an article that appeared in the "New York Times" dated July 17th 2009.
As the article says, it was because some customers had (no doubt unwittingly?) down loaded a pirated copy of George Orwell's "1984". But the article also says that those customers did get their money refunded, and it seems to suggest that
with the benefit of hindsight (my italics), Amazon could have acted in a rather more measured fashion. Here's part of said article,
QUOTE: ..... the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.
Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle
does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.” (My italics once again).
UNQUOTE:
Incidentally, Orwell's "1984", and all the Harry Potter books (also mentioned in parts of Mark's linked article) WERE this evening all available for purchase on the Amazon US Kindle web site when I checked yesterday evening.
But we have learnt that Amazon COULD, and at least sometimes, DOES "interfere" with customer's Kindles, apparently without their prior knowledge and consent. (Though to give the customers' their refunds, I would say those customers must have got to hear about that interference pretty quickly afterwards!)
And "Big Brother"-ish? Yes, I certainly think so, and certainly I don't very much like that idea. But short reflection suggests that at least since Henry VIIIth's time there's always been some kind of "Big Brother"-ish bloke or organisation at work (no, I'm not that old personally!). And in a not dissimilar context, while at first sight I don't like the idea of NSA or GCHQ (examples) reading my E-mails or my UKW posts, when I then consider that I'm not a terrorist or any other sort of criminal, and also considering that monitoring E-mails could (and GCHQ etc claim DOES actually) prevent terrorist attacks, then I'm not really objecting, except in a general, "in principle", grumbling way.
But that's just my personal attitude., Going back saving/securing my purchased Amazon/Kindle context, I end up really not worrying that much in the light of re-reading the text taken from that article, repeated, QUOTE: .... does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.” UNQUOTE:
In fact I DO have a copy of EVERY E-book I've purchased from Amazon. It's on my PC, and I access it through my down-loaded Kindle reader application (free from Amazon). Furthermore, all that (both the application itself and all the books I've bought) are back upped (by me) on an external hard drive. So in practice I don't see too chance of a "stealth Amazon attack" there!
Further, to answer one of your subsequent questions Mark, I HAVE printed out selected pages from a Kindle E-book I bought, with no problem at all, and certainly without going through the "computer contortions" you mention (just as well, as I couldn't have done any of that)!
Just to illuminate that statement, I bought a book "Understanding AF 447" (info - it's the "infamous" Air France Airbus A330 accident that ended up "disappearing" one night in May 2009 over the S. Atlantic, en route Rio/Paris). It's a highly technical book (ask anyone who's ever studied the Airbus fly by wire control laws and Auto Flight system!) and it contained loads of diagrams, maps, and internet links. I printed out some pages from that Kindle book (using the above Kindle reader app on my PC), and also some of the pages from the internet links. So while I was trying to get my head around "how on EARTH did they all manage to do THAT??", on my desk I had, all at the same time, my PC window open on one internet page, my Kindle open on a different page, my Kindle open on another page (via the PC app), plus a printed out diagram (from the Kindle E-book) and a printed out chart (from one of the internet links).
The linked "NYT" article does go on to say that buyers of physical goods cannot have someone just bursting into their homes, even if said goods were bootleg. Fair enough. But I wonder what would happen if, just for the sake of this discussion, one of our UKW members bought, say, an expensive Festool "down the pub" because it was 10% of list price, then boasted about that on the building site, only to be followed a short time later by a visit from the "gentlemen in blue"? Yup, this discussion is all getting disturbingly "hypothetical, out of the real world" - just as I feel are certain of the arguments put forward in that article. But IF the cheap Festool buyer was visited by the local constabulary, I can't see them giving him his money back, not matter how innocence was in his original purchase!
OK then, is this "better"? (from the same article):
QUOTE:
“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom and an expert on computer security and commerce. “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”
UNQUOTE:
Well I'm not sure what said Mr. Schneier's expertise really is, but according to my Kindle User's Guide, I MAY loan any of the Kindle E-books I've bought to anyone else who also has a Kindle that I care to link to. The ONLY limitations are that said loan may not last more than 14 days, and that during that loan period I cannot read said book myself. As said, I have NOT tried this, but that is quoted directly from my Kindle User's Guide, which is Version 2 BTW.
The only part of the Schneier quote that appears to be true is that I cannot sell the E-books I've bought onwards. I admit that this does infringe the rights I would have if I had bought a "hard copy" book instead of the E-book version, but in practice that limitation does not worry me at all - speaking personally, I don't sell any books, "E" or "hard".
The rest of Schneier's "guff" about not being sure if he's still got his books tomorrow is, IMHO, just that - guff. I believe for all the reasons I've set out above, that Amazon cannot, and further will not even try to, "disappear" any of my books, though they apparently could.
But Mark, I really have searched for hours and hours through several Amazon "Conditions of Use" (as they call their Ts & C's), and I just cannot find a specific clause which says a Kindle E-book that I've bought DOES (or alternatively does NOT) belong to me. Can you help me with a specific quote/clause, etc to nail that fact down, one way or the other, please?
Now to the screen "illumination" subject (I promise this bit is MUCH shorter)! I'm referring to previous posts by Jonzjob, petermillard, & sunnybob.
When I think about it, my Kindle Paperwhite screen MUST be illuminated in some way or other, of course. But I have no idea how. Perhaps it's got something to do with the "electronic ink" stuff that Amazon talks about?
Anyway, I can see no "lights" around/within the screen in any shape or form, and I repeat categorically, no matter what settings I use, there are NO provisions whatsoever on my Paperwhite to change screen brightness. I say that after going though both versions of my User's Guides (hard copy and electronic, stored on my Kindle itself). If it's dark (NIL ambient light) then I cannot read my screen.
The controls sunnybob referred to are not at all like those on my Paperwhite, and neither is my screen in any way touch sensitive (which your post suggested sunnybob).
Here's a .jpg scan of the controls on my Paperwhite:
Within the "Settings" menu (the LH of the buttons to the R the centre "5 way controller" thingy you can see above), amongst other things I can adjust typeface size, typeface type (sorry!), and Landscape or Portrait page on screen orientation. That's all, NO illumination/brightness - and please note, making those adjustments only works when a particular book is open, AND those changed settings do not apply when opening another book.
But interestingly, when using the Kindle app on my PC, I CAN adjust screen brightness (but that's only on the PC screen of course! It does nothing to the E-book file itself).
Here's part of the full spec of my Paperwhite, copied from my on-screen Users Guide:
Model Number: _D01100
Display: 6" diagonal, 600 x 800 pixel resolution, 16-level grey scale (please note I cannot find
any way of increasing or decreasing this)
Size: 6.5 x 4.5 x 0.34 (all inches)
Weight: 170 g
Storage: 2GB internal (approx. 1 GB available to user).
(Plus a lot of other stuff and approvals, etc, not relevant to this post).
Looking at the Amazon web site I see that there are MANY different models, so saying "I've got a Paperwhite" is probably just about as informative as saying "I've got a Metabo drill", without quoting a model number! Sorry all, I just didn't know that.
And said in a previous post Amazon does not update my Kindle software - as far as I knew. I was wrong, it seems from the Users Guide that they do, but I don't know about it.
But the main point for me is that A) it doesn't cost me anything for updates, and B) so far, no update (no idea how many I've had) has in any way changed my operation and/or control and usage of the device, so I don't have to learn anything new - my main bugbear with updates.
In summary then, I do believe that my first post on this thread listing advantages and disadvantages as I see them was both pretty accurate and pretty fair, with the new, added caveat that "one day, MAYBE", Mr. Amazon is going to raid my Kindle and steal all the books I've bought!
As detailed above, I think that in reality, the chances of that actually happening are vanishingly small, and even if it did happen, I THINK I'm pretty well covered in being able to recover the situation.
Thanks all for an interesting discussion, GREAT Forum this.
But now, IMO, unless someone has any defined inputs (NOT opinions please) about the "files belong to you/no, they do not belong to you" point, personally I feel we've drained this subject dry! (And that's NOT just me trying to have "the last word" in this discussion).
Cheers all
AES
